Reflections on Hebrews with Andrew Murray (11)

 

“Who, when he had made purification of sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high.” Hebrews 1:3.

 

As Murray continues to ponder Hebrews 1:3 he writes:

 

“Christ seated on the throne in heaven means our being actually brought, in the supernatural power which the coming down of the Holy Spirit supplies, into God’s holy presence, and living there our daily life…It is so much easier to take in the doctrine of a Substitute and an atonement, of repentance and pardon, than of a High Priest bringing us into God’s presence, and keeping us in loving communion with Him.”

 

“Let no one think that I speak of what is too high. I speak of what is your heritage and destiny. The same share you have in Jesus on the cross, you have in Jesus on the throne. Be ready to sacrifice the earthly life for the heavenly; to follow Christ fully in His separation from the world and His surrender to God’s will; and Christ in heaven will prove in you the reality and the power of His heavenly priesthood.”

 

There is a dynamic mystery in which we are brought into the Holy of Holies through Christ (Hebrews 4:14 – 16; 10:19 – 22), while at the same time our hearts are made the dwelling place of God (John 14:17, 23). That is, Christ lives in us and we live in Christ. We live before the Throne and our hearts and souls are made God’s Throne. We do not understand this but we can experience it…in fact it becomes our Way of Life in Christ.

 

We live “before” God as we live before His Throne and He as lives within us. We abide in His Tabernacle as we are before the Throne; also our hearts are made His tabernacle and also His Tabernacle. What I mean by our hearts being made His tabernacle and His Tabernacle is that as an individual I am a temple of the Living God (1 Cor. 6:19), and also that as individuals joined together we are His Body, His Church, His Bride…His Living Tabernacle (Ephesians 2:19 – 22; 1 Peter 2:4 – 10).

 

God’s Presence is in the Holy of Holies, God’s Presence is within me in Christ, God’s Presence is in us, His People. God’s Presence is in us as we are gathered, and His Presence is in us as we are scattered. Whether we are gathered or we are scattered we are called to live in the Holy of Holies; whether we are gathered or we are scattered His Presence is with us on our collective pilgrimage. As His People, we are called to be the particular place where God dwells on earth – not just a few hours a week, but throughout each moment, each day, we are Mount Zion, the heavenly Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven with the glory of God for the blessing and healing of the peoples of the earth.

 

Murray writes, “It is so much easier to take in the doctrine of a Substitute and an atonement, of repentance and pardon, than of a High Priest bringing us into God’s presence, and keeping us in loving communion with Him.” Well, for sure we seldom speak of the latter, and without the former we cannot have the latter, either objectively or subjectively. In my own experience I seldom see believers who actually live in either one of these realities in Christ, so many Christians remain at “first base”, not realizing the completeness of the Atonement, never living securely in a relationship with Jesus Christ. As the book of Hebrews will illustrate, many of us have been religiously raised to live in the mindset of the Old Covenant rather than the New Covenant.

 

The depths of having a “Substitute and an atonement, of repentance and pardon” can no more be fully plumbed than can the heights of having “a High Priest bringing us into God’s presence, and keeping us in loving communion with Him,” be scaled. The wonder and grandeur of the Trinity and of the Atonement, in all of its facets, is beyond us – and yet God’s grace continually draws us deeper into God’s life, His friendship, His fellowship (koinonia).

 

To live “in loving communion with Him” is the reason we exist, it is our purpose for living, it is why we were created in the image of God, and why we were redeemed by Jesus Christ.

 

As you read this, are you living both “at the Cross” and “before the Throne of God”? Is this our Way of Life?

 

We’ll continue with the above quote in our next post in this series.

 

Overcoming – Four Principles in Revelation 12 (Part 2)

 

“And they overcame him because the blood of the Lamb, and because of the word of their testimony, and they did not love their life even unto death.” Revelation 12:11.

 

If you have already died, then no one can take away your life. If you belong to Another, then no one can take away the life you do have because your life belongs to Christ, your life is Christ, your life is not your own. Paul writes, “I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I but Christ lives within me…” (Galatians 2:20). In Colossians 3:3 – 4 we read, “For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory.”

 

Consider what Jesus says about following Him, does this sound like a typical “invitation” in churches in the United States? Mark 8:34 – 38:

 

“And He summoned the crowd with His disciples, and said to them, If anyone desires to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the Gospel’s will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? For what will a man give in exchange for his soul?

 

“For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will also be ashamed of him when He comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels.”

 

Is this the call we give to the Gospel in our preaching, teaching, and witnessing? Is this the ethos of our individual and church life? Is this how we live? Perhaps it would be wiser if we taught our children this call of Jesus Christ rather than teaching them to memorize the books of the Bible?

 

The context of Revelation 12:11 is extreme conflict between the saints of God, the People of Christ, and the dragon and the concentrated powers of evil. An enraged enemy is making “war with the rest of her [the woman of Revelation 12:1] seed, who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus.”

 

The Scriptures are clear that we who follow Jesus Christ are called to follow Him in His sufferings, and that “through much tribulation we enter the Kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22). Peter and Paul both write of our communion (koinonia) in the sufferings of Christ (1 Peter 4:12-14; Philippians 3:10); with Paul teaching that there is an intercessory dimension to our sufferings in Christ (Colossians 1:24; 2 Corinthians 1:1 – 11).

 

How does the foregoing compare with the church in the United States? What does it look like in my life? In your life? In the life of our congregations?

 

How is it that most professing Christians in the United States have never shared the Gospel with another person? How is it that sharing the Gospel as a way of life is foreign to most professing Christians in the United Sates? How can this be if we have died and our lives are hidden in Christ? How can this be if we are not loving our lives unto death? Instead of relying on sales techniques and psychological and sociological methods to teach people “witnessing”, perhaps we should focus on grounding them in a crucified life in Jesus Christ? When love and obedience for Christ, and sacrificial love for others, reign supreme – we will share the Gospel with others.

 

I cringe when I hear Christians talk about whether they would physically die for Christ; when they will not die for Christ when it comes to money, possessions, social reputation, the values of the world, pride, ego, rejection, and sin. How can we entertain the question of whether we would physically die for Christ when we spend most of our lives avoiding the Cross and Christ’s sufferings? When our churches and our preaching focus on our therapy rather than on the Lamb slain for our sins and reconciliation? When a major section of our particularly American eschatology is focused on escaping suffering rather than loving not our lives to death?

 

The fact is that while many of us say we regard the Bible as the Word of God, that we may as well take scissors and cut out those passages which explicitly teach us about the sufferings of Christ and His Body – for we ignore them, we explain them away, and manufacture hundreds of reasons why those passages do not apply to us. We are as offended at the idea of the Cross and suffering as was Peter when he played the role of Satan (Matthew 16:21- 23). The difference between Peter and us is that Peter accepted the Lord’s rebuke, “Get behind Me, Satan!”, while we fill our ears with self-centered religious noise to drown out the words of Christ.

 

Bonhoeffer wrote, “When Christ calls a man, He bids him ‘Come and die.’”

 

Jim Elliot wrote, “He is no fool, who loses what he cannot keep, to gain what he cannot lose.”

 

Job cried out, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him!” (Job 13:15)

 

David prayed, “Whom have I in heaven but You? And there is none on earth I desire besides You.” (Psalm 73:25).

 

Paul said to the Ephesian elders, “But I do not consider my life of any account as dear to myself, so that I may finish my course and the ministry which I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify solemnly of the gospel of the grace of God.” (Acts 20:24).

 

Dear friends, if we would truly know Jesus then we will know Him in His sufferings. The holy Trinity invites us into the sufferings of God in Christ, the Great Mystery of Mysteries. As we increasingly know Him in His sufferings an intimacy envelops us that is too sacred for words; exquisite in its beauty, terrible in its majesty, all consuming in its passion, lovely in its splendor, incomparable in its grandeur. Little wonder that Paul wrote, “For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.” (1 Cor. 2:2).

 

Make My Heart An Altar

Robert L. Withers

 

Make my heart an altar

An altar of prayer

Of devotion

Of intercession

Of adoration

Of thanksgiving

Of sacrifice

 

Make my heart an altar

May it bear the sorrows of others

Their conflicts, fears, despairs

Let it bear their sufferings and heartbreaks

To the throne of my Lord Jesus

With the incense of care and compassion

With the fragrance of love

 

Let my heart be an altar

Let it be one with the Sacred Heart

Let it eat the Bread and drink the Cup

Let the Cross be deep within my heart

May my heart be pierced with nails and spear

May I drink of His sufferings, As He is

May I be, both priest and sacrifice.

Overcoming – Four Principles in Revelation 12 (Part 1)

 

Robert L. Withers, January 15, 2021

 

“And they overcame him because the blood of the Lamb, and because of the word of their testimony, and they did not love their life even unto death.” Revelation 12:11.

 

Those who call Jesus Christ their Lord are called to overcome as a way of life; whether facing temptation, the power of sin, the forces of the present age, or the concentrated onslaughts of the dragon, “the serpent of old who is called the devil and Satan” (Rev. 12:9).

 

In Revelation chapters two and three Jesus gives promises to those who overcome. In 21:7, the One who sits on the throne says, “He who overcomes will inherit all things, and I will be his God and he will be My son.” In referring to the “spirit of antichrist,” John writes (1 John 4:4), “You are from God, little children, and have overcome them; because greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world.” Then of course we have Paul’s Himalayan, “But in all these things we are super-overcomers through Him who loved us” (Romans 8:37ff).

 

Before we explore the dynamics of overcoming in Revelation 12, let’s remind ourselves of why Revelation was written:

 

“…the book of Revelation is a discipleship manual, not a crystal ball. John is not a kind of first-century Nostradamus. It is sad to see how this powerfully hope-giving book is turned into predictor-of-the-next-horrible-thing-that-will-happen-in-the-world. The British journalist G.K. Chesterton once quipped that “though St. John the Evangelist saw many strange monsters in his vision, he saw no creature so wild as one of his own commentators.”” Discipleship on the Edge, Darrell W. Johnson, Regent College Publishing, 2004, page 380.

 

Regarding the two-fold purpose of Revelation Johnson writes, “It seeks to set the present moment in all its brokenness, violence, uncertainty in light of the unseen realities of the future…But more importantly it seeks to set the present moment in light of the unseen realities of the present. The fundamental conviction of apocalyptic is “things are not as they seem.” There is more to reality that we can know with our unaided senses and intellect and emotions. The great purpose – the pastoral purpose – of Revelation is to open up that more and see Jesus in the midst of it all.” Johnson, page 381.

 

In considering the context of Revelation 12:11, let’s note that Satan is characterized as deceiving the whole world and that he and his angels are “thrown down to earth” (12:9). Let’s also consider that in 12:12 we see that while those who tabernacle in the heavens are to rejoice because “there was no longer a place found” for Satan and his angels in heaven (12:8); that those who inhabit the earth and the sea are told that a great woe has come upon them, “because the devil has come down to you, having great wrath.”

 

This brings us to the first principle of overcoming in Christ in Revelation 12, let’s express it with a question, “Where are we living?” May I ask, as you are reading this, where are you living? What has occupied your mind today? What is your heart holding deep within it? What are your most ardent desires? What do you want with all that you are? What is important to you, what is vital to your sense of well-being?

 

Revelation 12 presents us with a choice of where we are going to live; the heavens, or the earth and the sea? Just as Jesus says that we cannot serve two masters, for if we try we will hate one and love the other, so we cannot live in two different realms, our residence cannot be in two countries, we cannot be citizens of the City of God and the city of this world, we cannot serve the kingdoms of this world and the Kingdom of God – we must choose, by the grace of Christ, where we will live; where we will focus our minds, our thoughts, what our hearts will desire and entertain, into what we will invest our souls.

 

Will we worship the Father and the Lamb in the heavens, or will we worship the things of this age? What we desire we worship, and we will be transformed into the image of that which we worship…make no mistake about this.

 

Let’s look at the dangerous reality of living on the earth first, then we’ll focus our affection and attention on Christ above.

 

“Woe to the earth and sea dwellers, because the devil has come down to you, having great wrath” (12:12). In verse 11 the overcomers are not overcoming a nebulous evil, they are not confronting a scattered dominion of darkness of various hues and shades; it is clear that they are overcoming “him,” the dragon, the serpent, the devil, Satan – they are overcoming the head of the evil system that arrays itself against the true and living God and enslaves humanity. It is not the general army of the Philistines that we face, but rather Goliath.

 

This very serpent is pictured as being cast down to the earth, and being cast down to the earth it will feed on the people who live on the earth. The serpent is pictured in Genesis as eating dust, certainly a facet of this dust is fallen humanity; in Revelation this is particularly the old humanity in rebellion against God and the Lamb. The sea speaks to us of roiling humanity, chaotic humanity, in which the serpent has his way until his defeat is consummated.

 

The serpent feeds off the earth-dwellers, and he teaches the earth-dwellers to feed off himself. Can you see that this question of where we live is critical to us if we desire to be overcomers? If we live on the earth we will be consumed by the dragon.

 

When I ponder what is occurring in our society and especially the professing church, when I see Christians functionally repudiating the Gospel and Christ by advocating violence and idolatry; I see people living on the earth, consuming the serpent and being consumed by him. When I see professing Christians consumed by political and economic agendas, when I see them glued to media talking heads, seduced by conspiracy theories, enthralled by preachers who give them what they want; I see earth-dwellers being consumed by the one who feeds off dust.

 

Contrast this way of death with the Way of Life in Jesus Christ. “Therefore, if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth. For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory.” (Colossians 3:1-4).

 

We are either fixing our minds on the things above, or on the things that are on earth; we are either living in the heavens in Christ, or we are living as earth-dwellers.

 

Paul writes that when God made us alive in Christ, that He “raised us up with Him [Christ], and seated us with him in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus.” (Ephesians 2:4 – 6). Where are we living? Are we abdicating our position in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus? Are we trading our birthright for dust?

 

In Romans 12:1 – 2 we are taught that we are to present ourselves as living and holy sacrifices to God, not as sacrifices to this present age. We are not to be “conformed to this world,” but rather “transformed by the renewing of our minds.” Are we feeding off dust and the serpent, or off the One that bids us eat His flesh and drink His blood (John Chapter 6)?

 

As we behold Christ we are transformed into His image from glory to glory (2 Cor. 3:17 -  18), for when our eye is single our body is filled with light (Matt. 6:22 – 23). However, if our eye is fractured, if it is consuming the images of the earth, then it will be consumed by the earth’s images, images propagated by the dragon. We cannot consume the provender of the dragon with impunity; we will be engulfed with the collective insanity of the present age – an insanity more hideous within the professing church than without it.

 

Where are we living? Where am I living? Where are you living?

 

If I should write you a letter or send you a card, will the zip code be the 666 of the enemy, or that of the Father and the Lamb (Rev. 13:18 – 14:5)?

The Thief

 The Thief

By: George Bowers

December 2020

There is a wicked thief

That causes bitter grief.

But one we welcome in

To multiply our sin.

It steals the heart and mind,

And leaves emptiness behind.

It robs us of our prayer,

And proliferates our care.

It takes children’s innocence,

And breeds their angry insolence.

It costs us hours of sleep

Or thoughts so rich and deep.

Our purity’s snatched away,

Day by endless day.

It kidnaps Sabbath hours

By its captivating powers.

Holiness is its plunder,

Loss of worship and wonder.

Family time it takes

And arguments it makes.

Its ever incessant pleading

Steals our time for reading.

Our waistlines become swollen,

As our exercise stolen. 

Imagination’s slain

With the heartlessness of Cain.

It’s very plain to see,

This thief is our TV!

 

 

An Evening Thought: Salvation by Christ, with Penitential Cries

 By: Jupiter Hammon - 1711-1805

 

 

Salvation comes by Christ alone,

   The only Son of God;

Redemption now to every one,

   That love his holy Word.

 

Dear Jesus, we would fly to Thee,

   And leave off every Sin,

Thy tender Mercy well agree;

   Salvation from our King.

 

Salvation comes now from the Lord,

   Our victorious King.

His holy Name be well ador'd,

   Salvation surely bring.

 

Dear Jesus, give thy Spirit now,

   Thy Grace to every Nation,

That han't the Lord to whom we bow,

   The Author of Salvation.

 

Dear Jesus, unto Thee we cry,

   Give us the Preparation;

Turn not away thy tender Eye;

   We seek thy true Salvation.

 

Salvation comes from God we know,

   The true and only One;

It's well agreed and certain true,

   He gave his only Son.

 

Lord, hear our penetential Cry:

   Salvation from above;

It is the Lord that doth supply,

   With his Redeeming Love.

 

Dear Jesus, by thy precious Blood,

   The World Redemption have:

Salvation now comes from the Lord,

   He being thy captive slave.

 

Dear Jesus, let the Nations cry,

   And all the People say,

Salvation comes from Christ on high,

   Haste on Tribunal Day.

 

We cry as Sinners to the Lord,

   Salvation to obtain;

It is firmly fixed, his holy Word,

   Ye shall not cry in vain.

 

Dear Jesus, unto Thee we cry,

   And make our Lamentation:

O let our Prayers ascend on high;

   We felt thy Salvation.

 

Lord, turn our dark benighted Souls;

   Give us a true Motion,

And let the Hearts of all the World,

   Make Christ their Salvation.

 

Ten Thousand Angels cry to Thee,

   Yea, louder than the Ocean.

Thou art the Lord, we plainly see;

   Thou art the true Salvation.

 

Now is the Day, excepted Time;

   The Day of the Salvation;

Increase your Faith, do not repine:

   Awake ye, every Nation.

 

Lord, unto whom now shall we go,

   Or seek a safe abode?

Thou has the Word Salvation Too,

   The only Son of God.

 

Ho! every one that hunger hath,

   Or pineth after me,

Salvation be thy leading Staff,

   To set the Sinner free.

 

Dear Jesus, unto Thee we fly;

   Depart, depart from Sin,

Salvation doth at length supply,

   The Glory of our King.

 

Come, ye Blessed of the Lord,

   Salvation greatly given;

O turn your Hearts, accept the Word,

   Your Souls are fit for Heaven.

 

Dear Jesus, we now turn to Thee,

   Salvation to obtain;

Our Hearts and Souls do meet again,

   To magnify thy Name.

 

Come, Holy Spirit, Heavenly Dove,

   The Object of our Care;

Salvation doth increase our Love;

   Our Hearts hath felt they fear.

 

Now Glory be to God on High,

   Salvation high and low;

And thus the Soul on Christ rely,

   To Heaven surely go.

 

Come, Blessed Jesus, Heavenly Dove,

   Accept Repentance here;

Salvation give, with tender Love;

   Let us with Angels share. 

 

Finis.

 

This poem is in the public domain.

 

Jupiter Hammon

1711–1805

Jupiter Hammon was the first African American poet to be published in the United States. He was born in Lloyd Harbor, New York, on October 17, 1711, and was enslaved by Henry Lloyd. The Lloyd family encouraged Hammon to attend school, where he learned to read and write, and he went on to work alongside Henry Lloyd as a bookkeeper and negotiator for the family’s business. In his early years, Hammon was heavily influenced by the Great Awakening, a major religious revival of the time, and became a devout Christian.

 

Hammon published his first poem, “An Evening Thought. Salvation by Christ with Penitential Cries: Composed by Jupiter Hammon, a Negro belonging to Mr. Lloyd of Queen’s Village, on Long Island, the 25th of December, 1760,” as a broadside in 1761. Eighteen years passed before the publication of his second work, “An Address to Miss Phillis Wheatley.” In this poem, Hammon addresses a series of quatrains with accompanying Bible verses to Wheatley, the most prominent African American poet of the time. In 1782 Hammon published “A Poem for Children with Thoughts on Death.”

 

After Henry Lloyd died in 1763, Hammon remained enslaved by Lloyd’s son, Joseph, with whom he moved to Connecticut. There, he became a leader in the African American community and attended abolitionist and Revolutionary War societies. At the inaugural meeting of the Spartan Project of the African Society of New York City in September of 1786, Hammon delivered his most famous sermon, “Address to the Negroes of the State of New York.” His writing was reprinted by several abolitionist societies, including the New York Quakers and the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery.

 

Hammon is widely considered one of the founders of the early American and African American writing traditions. His date of death is unknown, although he is believed to have died sometime around 1806, having been enslaved his entire life. He is likely buried in an unmarked grave on what was once the Lloyd property and is now Caumsett State Historic Park Preserve in Long Island, New York.

 

Caesar and God

It just so happens that my small group is looking at Matthew 22:15 - 22 for next week. Here is the handout I sent them this morning.

 Good morning brothers,

Perhaps it is an accident that we have this passage next week...but maybe not.

I don't cry often, but I cried yesterday...not just for our nation, but for the abdication of a distinct witness by much of the church in this land - when Christians are politicized all hell breaks loose. 

Matthew 22:15 – 22.

 

This is the first of four questions in Matthew Chapter 22:

 

1.    Matthew 22:15 – 22, a sociopolitical question about taxes; how much should we give ourselves to our country?

2.    Matthew 22:23 – 33, a supernatural question about Resurrection.

3.    Matthew 22:34 – 40, a Scriptural question about the Greatest Commandment.

4.    Matthew 22:41 – 46, a Sonship question about the Lordship of Christ.

 

Pharisees = think religious group

 

Herodians = think political group

 

Isn’t it nice when both groups combine?

 

They both have an interest in killing Jesus.

 

If Jesus says that the tax shouldn’t be paid then He can be accused of violating Roman law and siding with those against Rome – inciting the Herodians. If Jesus says that it should be paid then He can be accused of endorsing Roman occupation and inciting the Pharisees, and more radical Jews.

 

Jesus literally asks, “Show me the coin of the tax.” The silver denarius was a coin minted for this tax, with the head of Tiberius Caesar on one side and the head of his mother, Livia, on the other. On one side of the coin was printed, “Ti[berius] Caesar, worshipful son of the divine Augustus.” You might call this a “portable idol.”

 

When Jesus asks whose image and inscription is on the coin, He forces them to say “Caesar’s”, to acknowledge the image on the coin and who the ownership of the coin belongs to.

 

Bruner writes, “Their reply half answers their own question: they possess in the coin the possession of another. Is it ever wrong to return property to its owner? Jesus could have stopped there. But he adds one more stroke, his great principle, to teach with all possible clarity the truth of loyal but limited responsibility to political power.”

 

When Jesus says, “Render” the Greek word means to “give back” – since it belongs to Caesar give it back to Caesar.

 

Here are some other passages regarding Christians and government:

 

1 Timothy 2:1 – 2 (many Christians seem to only pray for those they agree with); Romans 13:1 – 7 (note context); Titus 3:1 – 3 (many Christians ignore this, “Christian” vitriol and sarcasm is sickening); 1 Peter 2:13 – 20 (the context of this is suffering, Peter expects his readers to respect the state even if the state persecutes them).

 

I’m going to close this handout with an extensive quote from Frederick Dale Bruner’s commentary on Matthew, Bruner is a Presbyterian, but what he has to say is not unusual historically, nor among those who struggle with the implications of the Bible’s teaching (the Barman Declaration that Bruner mentions was a document of the faithful German church (a minority) drawn up during Nazism when most of the church was being politicized for nationalist and political ends – of course that would never happen here, thank goodness). The underlining is mine:

 

“But if the first half of Jesus’ answer means the honor of the state, the last half means the limitation of the state. “But [you give back] to God the things that belong to God!” As Caesar’s coin bears Caesar’s image and belongs to Caesar, so God’s human beings bear God’s image and belong to God. God provides humanity with all kinds of services through the state, and so now God mandates through his Son that humans honor God’s servant state, with a due reciprocity – with a due, not a deified, reciprocity. The “total” in the word totalitarian signifies undue respect for the state. “My country, right or wrong” is a totalitarian statement. The only reality with a total claim on conscience is God. Jesus’ Caesar – God formula means that we are to give Caesar a great deal, but not an allegiance that knows no bounds. God is the boundary of the state.

 

“The state is God’s servant, and the preponderance of NT witnesses to the state lays emphasis on this dignifying fact. But the state can become demonic, and it is one ministry of the book of Revelation to paint this fact colorfully (esp. Rev. 13 and 18). The state becomes demonic in the measure that it asks for itself “the things of God,” such as total commitment, unconditional obedience, or uncriticizing allegiance (e.g. “America, Love It or Leave it”). Some governments play God or the special friend of God. In such cases, the warning of the Presbyterianism’s Confession of 1967 is salutary: “Although nations may serve God’s purposes in history, the church which identifies the sovereignty of any one nation or any one way of life with the cause of God denies the Lordship of Christ and betrays its calling” (see the fifth thesis of The Theological Declaration of Barmen for similar limitations).

 

“Implicit then, in Jesus’s imperial answer is a twofold critique: (1) of those who give the (even usurper) state too little, such as the anticolonial revolutionaries and later the Zealots, and (2) of those who give the state an almost divine too much, like the Herodians and all later hyperpatriots. Jesus’s command frees the secular – political realm from ultimacy and makes it penultimate. Every attempt to make our politics God’s, or to make the political divine or ultimate, as the Far Right and the Far Left are always inclined to do (“Far” usually means the divinization of a cause), must shatter on this Word of Stone. Fundamentalisms of all kinds illustrate this evil dramatically.”

 

Much love,

 

Bob

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When The Church Becomes A Whore

 

January 6, 2021

 

I wrote this a few days ago, but then thought maybe it was too strong and I put it aside. Now it isn’t strong enough. Shame, shame, shame on so many “professing Christians” who have abandoned the Way of the Prince of Peace.

 

What sacrilege, what idolatry. What a disgrace of the Gospel.

 

It seems we’ve traded the white linen of Christ for the brownshirts of the “man of lawlessness.”

 

Robert L. Withers

 

The Price of Infidelity – When the Church Becomes a Whore

 

How can we explain the alignment of professing Christians with people who engage in vitriol, weave webs of lies, and advocate lawlessness and violence? How can we explain the adoption of these sins by professing Christians?

 

How is it that those who purport to be followers of Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, the Prince of Peace, engage in verbal and physical violence and intimidation; idolizing and defending the narcissistic and indefensible?

 

How is it that knowing that the devil is the accuser and slanderer, that professing Christians propagate accusations and slander?

 

Let’s remember that the primary Biblical image for idolatry is adultery, spiritual promiscuity. With this in mind, consider Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 6:15 – 20:

 

“Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take away the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Far from it! Or do you not know that the one who joins himself to a prostitute is one body with her? For He says, “The two shall become one flesh.” But the one who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit with Him. Flee sexual immorality. Every other sin that a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been bought for a price: therefore glorify God in your body.” (NASB)

 

While the immediate context of this passage is physical promiscuity, note the introduction of the spiritual in, “But the one who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit with Him.” As we see throughout the Bible, we become what we worship; we take on the characteristics of that which we join ourselves to – and no amount of rationalization can alter this fact. In 2 Corinthians 6:14 – 7:1 Paul writes:

 

“Do not be bound together with unbelievers; for what partnership have righteousness and lawlessness, or what fellowship has light with darkness? Or what harmony has Christ with Belial, or what has a believer in common with an unbeliever? Or what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; just as God said,

 

“I will dwell in them and walk among them; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people, says the Lord. And do not touch the unclean; and I will welcome you. And I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to Me, says the Lord Almighty.

 

“Therefore, having these promises, believed, let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness n the fear of God.” (NASB)

 

So then, how do we account for the fact that so many professing Christians are manifesting the spirit of lawlessness and violence, rather than fulfilling their calling in Christ Jesus to be peacemakers (Matthew 5:9; Hebrews 12:14; James 3:13 – 18)?

 

It is because rather than being faithful to Christ as a pure virgin (2 Corinthians 11:1 – 3), much of His Bride as believed the, “Has God really said?” of the serpent. Having believed that, they have engaged in adultery with those elements which war against our Lord Jesus (Psalm 2) to the point where they take on the characteristics of these elements…forgetting that they are called to be the sons and daughters of the living God.

 

When God’s people join themselves to prostitutes, they take on the characteristics of prostitutes. Though as the Lord says concerning His people in Ezekiel 16:32 – 34:

 

“You adulteress wife, who takes strangers instead of her husband! Men give gifts to all harlots, but you give your gifts to all your lovers to bribe them to come to you from every direction for your harlotries. Thus you are different from those women in your harlotries, in that no one plays the harlot as you do, because you give money and no money is given you; thus you are different.”

 

 

 

Reflections on Hebrews with Andrew Murray (10)

 

“Who, when he had made purification of sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high.” Hebrews 1:3.

 

In considering this verse, Murray wants us to see that the work of Christ “…consists in two parts: the one on earth, the other in heaven.” The purification of sins speaks to us of Christ’s work on earth, the Crucifixion and all that it entails; the sitting down at the right hand of the Majesty directs our attention to Christ’s work in heaven. Murray writes that, “In a healthy Christian life we must know and hold fast both parts of Christ’s work.”

 

My own sense is that it is better to view the work of Christ as seamless in heaven and earth, and in earth and heaven; but the merit in Murray’s pastoral approach is to try to get us to ponder not only what Christ has done on earth, but also what Christ is doing in heaven. Murray continues:

 

“The work He did upon earth was but a beginning of the work He was to do in heaven; in the latter the work on earth finds its perfection and its glory. As Priest He completed the cleansing of sins here below; as Priest-King He sits on the right hand of the throne to apply His work, in heavenly power to dispense its blessings, and maintain within us the heavenly life.” Note Murray’s continued emphasis on the heavenly life within us. We will see how Christ applies His work as we progress through Hebrews.

 

Murray writes, “The full acceptance of the cleansing of sins…will be to us…the entrance into the heavenly life.” Murray tells us that God’s desire to cleanse us from our sins is “so intense that He gave His Son to die…”

 

While the glory of Christ’s perfect work unfolds in our progression through Hebrews, I’d like us to note the words ”full acceptance”, for it seems to me that many of us struggle with fully accepting the fact that Jesus Christ has indeed fully cleansed us of our sins.

 

I still recall a Sunday morning message that I preached many years ago on 1 John 1:1 – 2:2. Included in this passage is:

 

“If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness…And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and He Himself is the propitiation for our sins…”

 

After the service various people in the congregation came up to me to tell me that they had never realized there were these precious promises of God in Christ. This struck me because many of these people had been in the church for years, some were leaders; and I knew that the pastor before me, and at least one pastor before him, were committed to Christ and His Gospel. Since then I have encountered this reaction many times, in various settings, including in settings which purport to emphasize the fundamentals of the Gospel.

 

In some settings people know the right things to say about forgiveness of sins, but their lives do not manifest the assurance of what they say, for they continue to functionally frame life in terms of their forgiveness and salvation being contingent upon themselves. In other settings preachers and teachers may preach the above passage from First John, or passages such as Romans 5:1 – 11, but then they undermine Christ’s perfect work of salvation by creating salvific insecurities in people by making them think that there is still something that a man or woman can add to “seal the salvific deal.” Perhaps there is a “higher” revelation, a greater teaching, a consummating experience, that a person must have to be fully accepted by God in Christ.

 

I can’t pretend to understand why this failure to accept the work of Christ is so, but I do know that I constantly encounter it among people who should know better. I agree with Murray that we must fully accept the glory, in Christ, of the forgiveness of our sins if we are to know the glorious heavenly life of Jesus Christ. Murray tells us that God’s love for us, and His desire to cleanse us of our sins, was “so intense that He gave His Son to die.”

 

Can we glimpse this intensity in Romans 5:8 – 10?

 

“But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.”

 

Why cannot we live securely in the love of our Great and Wonderful God? What can we possibly add to such a glorious and wondrous and passionate and intense love?

 

It is our Father’s deep desire that in Christ the life of heaven would live in us. O the treasures that are ours in Jesus Christ (Colossians 2:2 – 3).

 

May I gently ask, have you fully accepted the cleansing of your sins in Jesus Christ? Is the heavenly life of Jesus Christ now living within you? Please ponder Romans 5:1 – 11 and 1 John 1:1 – 2:2. Where are you in these passages?

 

Never ever forget the intense love that God has for you in and through Jesus Christ.

Two Psalms; Two Ways

 

Over the past several weeks, as I have dealt with my own fatigue regarding the chaos surrounding us; from the pandemic, to the suffering of the world and the people in my own country, to a failure of political leadership which fiddles while its citizens suffer and its national security rots, to much of the white “Evangelical” church trading the Lamb of Revelation Chapter 14 for the political and economic beast of Revelation Chapter 13, I have faced the temptation to just “go fishing.”

 

What I mean by “go fishing” is to hang a sign on the shop door which says, “Closed, gone fishing,” meaning that I’ll shut down for a while and come back in a few weeks or months and see how the world and church are doing. But, life is a marathon and when we hit our heartbreak hills the importance of patient endurance becomes more apparent than ever – we continue in faithfulness to Christ and others, we continue in intercessory prayer and living, we continue in desiring to serve people in Jesus Christ; we remain on the course no matter how painful it is to put one foot in front of another. We do this because we love Jesus Christ and we love people – we do not do this primarily for ourselves; this is not about me (or you), it is about Christ and others (Hebrews 12:1-3; 1 John 3:16; 2 Timothy 2:10).

 

I’m reminded of a book that Bishop Fulton Sheen wrote, The Priest Is Not His Own, in which Sheen’s central thrust is that the priest is both priest and sacrifice, which of course speaks to us of our Lord Jesus. If we are indeed a priesthood in Jesus Christ (1 Peter 2:9; Revelation 1:6), then our calling to be priest and sacrifice is clear – no matter what “Christian” self-centered heresies may teach.  

 

No doubt there have been times when you’ve seen photos or video of the aftermath of earthquakes in nations with shoddy and unscrupulous building practices. Multistory apartment buildings lie in rubble, beneath which are lifeless bodies whose lives were snatched from them in what they thought was a secure home. The morning of the tragedy it is unlikely that any of the deceased wondered, “Will my home crumble today, will it fail to withstand the shock of an earthquake?”

 

When watching such scenes have you ever thought, “That would never happen in the United States because our building codes are better than other most nations and they are enforced”?

 

Paul writes that we, as God’s People, are to grow up in the unity of the faith, becoming a mature corporate Man, “to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fulness of Christ. So that we will no longer be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming…” (Ephesians 4:13b – 14).

 

One of the things that the present chaos has revealed, to those who care to “see”, is that the professing church in the United States is childish, and that our insatiable desire to be entertained, to have our egos stroked, to be fascinated by talking heads and political events, to be excited by eschatological fancies that require nothing of us but imagination and gullibility; has led to us being buried beneath piles of rubble. In our drunkenness we cannot see the rubble, we cannot feel it, for we are blinded and desensitized.

 

I do not think it hyperbole to consider that we are seeing a great apostasy in the professing church (2 Thess. 2:3) in which we would rather have Barabbas than Jesus, in which we would rather be imprinted with the mark of the beast than of the Lamb (Rev. chapters 13 and 14). I am not saying that this is “the” “falling away/apostasy” of 2 Thessalonians, but whatever it is, we see the working of the “man of lawlessness” when we see professing Christians abandon fidelity to Christ for fidelity to political, national, cultural, and economic agendas. There is a reason the Apostle John discusses the world and the antichrist in the same breath (1 John 2:15 – 17).

 

There are no better passages with which to begin the new year than Psalms 1 and 2. In Psalm 1 we have two ways, sinful man’s way and God’s Way. In Psalm 2 we have two kingdoms, the kingdom of this present age and the Kingdom of God; we can either align ourselves with the rulers of this world (Ephesians 6:12) or we can live under the dominion of the King of kings and Lord of lords, Jesus Christ.

 

Every day of this new year we will either be living in the “way of the wicked” or the “Way of the Righteous” (Psalm 1:6).

 

Every day of this new year we will either be living as citizens and subjects of the nations and rulers of this age, or as citizens of the Kingdom of God and subjects of the King of that kingdom, the Lord Jesus Christ.

 

Which shall it be in my life?

 

What about your life?

 

Perhaps you might consider making these two psalms a focus of meditation for January?